/
Training ends in midair; check ride tomorrow
Click on images for larger view.Photos by AOPA member David Mitchell
Dec 23 — Student pilot Barbara Yeninas is slated for a very special check ride December 24 in Florida. She was in a midair collision earlier this month in which two small aircraft locked together but landed safely.
Alan Vangee, Yeninas’ CFI who also survived the freak midair collision in mid-December at the Plant City (Florida) Municipal Airport, said that all he saw "was a wheel, coming right down through the windshield" of his Cessna 152. Vangee and his student, Yeninas, were practicing landings at Plant City last Sunday when 19-year-old private pilot Jay Perrin of Melbourne, Florida, essentially landed his Piper Cadet on top of Vangee’s Cessna.
"I heard him call downwind, then base leg, and he said he ‘had the Cessna in sight’…but there were two Cessnas in the pattern that day. The next thing I knew, there was a nosewheel coming through our windshield," Vangee said in an exclusive interview with AOPA. "We were on final, at about 150 feet agl, I suppose, when his landing gear hit us from above," Vangee continued. "The Piper’s main gear landed on top of our flaps, damaging the left flap. The nosewheel, after it came through the windshield, shifted a little to the right, which was good because it kept the prop arcs away from each other."
After colliding, the two airplanes descended as one, with Vangee steering the whole works toward the left of the runway. "I figured that landing on the grass might soften the impact and prevent sparks from igniting any fuel that might leak," the 25-year CFI said. Vangee, 65, is a retired Air Force officer who taught ROTC classes and works as a part-time instructor at Plant City Airport Services. "It worked out well, except for the flap damage and some scratches," Vangee said. "Our landing gear even seemed to handle the extra load without damage." The Piper’s tail ended up resting on top of the Cessna’s empennage.
Vangee said that after the two airplanes came to rest, Perrin emerged from his cockpit to fully assess what had just happened. "He said he knew he hit something," Vangee said, "but he didn’t see what it was [the Piper Cadet is a low-wing design, so its pilot can’t see the area blocked by the wing planform]. He said he went to full power and tried to pull up after he hit us, but of course nothing happened-he was attached to us!"
"I knew I’d landed," Vantee quoted Perrin as saying. "But I couldn’t figure out why I was sitting so high off the ground." Perrin is reportedly a private pilot based at the Bartow, Florida, airport.
In his preliminary narrative of the accident, Perrin described descending from his airplane after the landing and looking into the Cessna’s cabin, saying that Vangee and Yeninas appeared to be "two semi-healthy people." In fact, no one was injured in the accident.
The Cadet suffered very minor damage. It was lifted off the Cessna with a crane and straps, then flown back to Bartow the following day. The Cessna will undergo repairs at Plant City. It had damage to the right wing leading edge, windscreen, vertical stabilizer, and left flap track. The left main gear was pushed into the track flap.
And what about Yeninas? "She handled it very, very well," Vangee said. "Her biggest worry was how to break the news to her husband, who I guess wasn’t very enthusiastic about her taking up flying lessons in the first place." — Thomas A. Horne
©1996-1999 Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association
Contact AOPA